Professor Happiness

Q&A with the popular Harvard professor and best-selling author.

The Israeli who introduced and taught the most popular course at Harvard University, “The Science of Happiness,” has come back to Israel after 15 years abroad. Turns out, he is happiest in his homeland.

“The main reason is family,” says Prof. Tal Ben-Shahar. Now he’s teaching the same course at IDC-Herzliya, a private Israeli university.

Born in 1970 in the Tel Aviv area, Ben-Shahar left for the United States after completing his military service in 1992. He earned a PhD at Harvard, worked for two years in Singapore as an organizational behaviorist for an Israeli company, and studied education for a year in England. He toured the world playing professional squash, winning both the U.S. Intercollegiate and Israeli National squash championships.

A spectacular new documentary film, Israel Inside: How a Small Nation Makes a Big Difference, examines Israel through Ben-Shahar’s eyes as he returns home with his interior decorator wife, Tami, and their three young children. The film is being shown in major U.S. cities and on the PBS, before being translated into other languages.

“When I came back, I realized the time and distance away enabled me to see Israel in a whole new light,” he explains in the film. “The Israel I came back to was not the Israel I left… Israel had not only joined the 21st century; in many ways it was now leading the way.”

Time we spend with people we care about and who care about us is the number one predictor of happiness.

Ben-Shahar lectures on leadership, education, ethics, happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal-setting and mindfulness. He wrote the international best-sellers Happier and Being Happy, which have been translated into 25 languages. Recently he co-wrote two children’s books in Hebrew about real people who applied the principles of positive psychology to cope with difficulties; and co-founded an organization dedicated to spreading positive psychology.

Q: A recent Gallup survey ranked Israel seventh out of 124 countries based on the happiness level of residents. Why do you think 63 percent of Israeli respondents said they were happy — more than in the US or UK?

Ben-Shahar: It’s because of our focus on relationships. Friends and family are very high up on our value scale, and quality time with them is given a priority. Time we spend with people we care about and who care about us is the number one predictor of happiness.

Q: Can you trace the origin of your interest in positive psychology?

Ben-Shahar: I was doing well as an undergraduate student at Harvard, I was a top athlete, I had a good social life — and I was unhappy. I wanted to overcome this personal challenge, and I explored the writings of the great thinkers from the past — the likes of Confucius, Lao Tzu, Aristotle and Plato — as well as contemporary researchers. These works helped me become happier, and then I wanted to share what I’d learned with others.

[A few years ago, Ben-Shachar hosted an accredited online course for Aish called, “Positive Psychology and Judaism.” He explains: “Many of the ideas quote-unquote ‘discovered’ by modern psychologists, had actually been present for thousands of years in traditional Jewish sources.]

Q: How would you define happiness?

Ben-Shahar: Happiness is the overall experience of pleasure and meaning. A happy person enjoys positive emotions while perceiving her life as purposeful. The definition does not pertain to a single moment, but to a generalized aggregate of one’s experiences: A person can endure emotional pain at times and still be happy overall. To lead a happy life, we need to experience, as much as possible, the combination of both meaning and pleasure. If I find my work meaningful but not pleasurable, I will not be happy doing it and will ultimately burn out. If I find what I do pleasurable but it has little meaning for me, I will quickly lose interest.

Tal Ben-Shahar’s Seven Steps to Happiness

(1) Give yourself permission to be human. When we accept emotions as natural, we are more likely to overcome them. Rejecting our emotions, positive or negative, leads to frustration and unhappiness. We are a culture obsessed with pleasure and believe that the mark of a worthy life is the absence of discomfort. When we experience pain, we take it to indicate that something must be wrong with us. In fact, there is something wrong with us if we don’t experience sadness or anxiety at times. When we give ourselves permission to experience painful emotions, we are more likely to open ourselves up to positive emotions.

(2) Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters, moments throughout the week that provide you with both pleasure and meaning. Research shows that an hour or two of a meaningful and pleasurable experience can affect the quality of an entire day, or even a whole week.

(3) Keep in mind that happiness is mostly dependent on our state of mind, not on our status or our bank account. Barring extreme circumstances, our level of well-being is determined by what we choose to focus on and by our interpretation of external events. Do we focus on the empty part of the full part of the glass? Do we view failures as catastrophic, or do we see them as learning opportunities?

(4) Simplify! We are generally too busy, trying to squeeze in more and more activities into less and less time. Quantity influences quality, and we compromise on our happiness by trying to do too much. Knowing when to say “no” to others often means saying “yes” to ourselves.

(5) Remember the mind-body connection. What we do — or don’t do — with our bodies influences our mind. Regular exercise, adequate sleep and healthy eating habits lead to both physical and mental health.

(6) Express gratitude, whenever possible. We too often take our lives for granted. Learn to appreciate and savor the wonderful things in life, from people to food, from nature to a smile.

(7) The number one predictor of happiness is the time we spend with people we care about and who care about us. The most important source of happiness may be the person sitting next to you. Appreciate them; savor the time you spend together.

Featured at Aish.com:

About the Author

Abigail Klein Leichman is a writer and associate editor at ISRAEL21c. Prior to moving to Israel in 2007, she was a specialty writer and copy editor at a daily newspaper in New Jersey and has freelanced for a variety of newspapers and periodicals since 1984.

The opinions expressed in the comment section are the personal views of the commenters. Comments are moderated, so please keep it civil.

Visitor Comments: 6

(4)
Shoshana-Jerusalem,
June 3, 2015 4:22 PM

gratitude to H-shem

step #6-gratitude. Add G-d to the list. If we will get into the habit of thanking Him for all that we have - family,health, eyes, ears, the sky, the flowers, we will be so happy.

Also thank Him for all the good He does for us daily, Thank You that I woke up, that I'm alive, that the kids got out on time, that I made the bus, that I got across the street safely. Then you will find true happiness.

(3)
Anonymous,
May 7, 2012 8:27 AM

Destined to be unhappy?

And people that have no friends/family? Are they destined to be unhappy?

Kira,
May 8, 2012 5:28 AM

there's always someone who needs a friend

Giving to others is necessary for a person's well-being. It is not optional. If you don't have someone who needs you in your life already, find someone. There are organizations that help people do this.

(2)
Anonymous,
May 6, 2012 9:09 PM

To answer comment #1

Look here http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/14/world-happiest-countries-lifestyle-realestate-gallup-table.html It seems that Israel was tied with 3 other countries for 8th place. This was a Gallup study from 2005 to 2009

(1)
Anonymous,
May 6, 2012 5:01 PM

Israel 7th in happiness?

With all due respect, I would like to see the source of this Gallup Poll. I am familiar with a number of these polls, including Gallup. In fact, I was just looking at several of them. The most recent poll has Israel in the middle of the table. I looked at other polls, since different criteria are used, and I cannot find one poll that has Israel in 7th place. A reference would be appreciated. Thank you.

Bunny Shuch,
May 7, 2012 6:24 AM

2011 poll - Israel ranked 7th - check it out

According to www.ynetnews.com and www.jta.org, the April 24, 2011 Gallup Poll on happiness ranked Israel 7th. In 2010, Israel tied for 8th place in the Gallup Poll happiness index.

I've been striving to get more into spirituality. But it seems that every time I make some progress, I find myself slipping right back to where I started. I'm getting discouraged and feel like a failure. Can you help?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

Spiritual slumps are a natural part of spiritual growth. There is a cycle that people go through when at times they feel closer to God and at times more distant. In the words of the Kabbalists, it is "two steps forward and one step back." So although you feel you are slipping, know that this is a natural process. The main thing is to look at your overall progress (over months or years) and be able to see how far you've come!

This is actually God's ingenious way of motivating us further. The sages compare this to teaching a baby how to walk. When the parent is holding on, the baby shrieks with delight and is under the illusion that he knows how to walk. Yet suddenly, when the parent lets go, the child panics, wobbles and may even fall.

At such times when we feel spiritually "down," that is often because God is letting go, giving us the great gift of independence. In some ways, these are the times when we can actually grow the most. For if we can move ourselves just a little bit forward, we truly acquire a level of sanctity that is ours forever.

Here is a practical tool to help pull you out of the doldrums. The Sefer HaChinuch speaks about a great principle in spiritual growth: "The external awakens the internal." This means that although we may not experience immediate feelings of closeness to God, eventually, by continuing to conduct ourselves in such a manner, this physical behavior will have an impact on our spiritual selves and will help us succeed. (A similar idea is discussed by psychologists who say: "Smile and you will feel happy.")

That is the power of Torah commandments. Even if we may not feel like giving charity or praying at this particular moment, by having a "mitzvah" obligation to do so, we are in a framework to become inspired. At that point we can infuse that act of charity or prayer with all the meaning and lift it can provide. But if we'd wait until being inspired, we might be waiting a very long time.

May the Almighty bless you with the clarity to see your progress, and may you do so with joy.

In 1940, a boatload 1,600 Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler's ovens was denied entry into the port of Haifa; the British deported them to the island of Mauritius. At the time, the British had acceded to Arab demands and restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine. The urgent plight of European Jewry generated an "illegal" immigration movement, but the British were vigilant in denying entry. Some ships, such as the Struma, sunk and their hundreds of passengers killed.

If you seize too much, you are left with nothing. If you take less, you may retain it (Rosh Hashanah 4b).

Sometimes our appetites are insatiable; more accurately, we act as though they were insatiable. The Midrash states that a person may never be satisfied. "If he has one hundred, he wants two hundred. If he gets two hundred, he wants four hundred" (Koheles Rabbah 1:34). How often have we seen people whose insatiable desire for material wealth resulted in their losing everything, much like the gambler whose constant urge to win results in total loss.

People's bodies are finite, and their actual needs are limited. The endless pursuit for more wealth than they can use is nothing more than an elusive belief that they can live forever (Psalms 49:10).

The one part of us which is indeed infinite is our neshamah (soul), which, being of Divine origin, can crave and achieve infinity and eternity, and such craving is characteristic of spiritual growth.

How strange that we tend to give the body much more than it can possibly handle, and the neshamah so much less than it needs!